Banged up in Burma

On the evening of 18 January, 2011, Ross Dunkley, publisher and editor of the Myanmar Times, dropped into the 369 Club in downtown Yangon. There's not a lot of night-life in Yangon and the 369 is about as good as it gets. There Ross met Khine Zar Win, aged 29, whose occupation was later described as "sex worker" – less delicately, a prostitute.

Ross took Khine Zar Win home around midnight – his place. After that, accounts diverge. According to Ross, she was behaving strangely and he told her to get back in the car so he could drive her to the road at the end of the lane, where she could find a taxi. She refused and he had to force her. Halfway up the lane she jumped out and refused to get back into the car. Ross drove home and Khine Zar Win asked local house-guards to call a taxi.

According to Khine Zar Win, Ross drugged her, assaulted her, and held her captive for three days.

She lodged a complaint with the police.

In the early hours of the 19^th the police came to Ross's house with Khine Zar Win and took a statement. Later they interviewed witnesses at the 369 club and the security guards from the laneway, all of whom backed Ross's version. Khine Zaw Win was tested for drugs, although not until several days later – and she showed positive for amphetamines. The police came back with a search warrant and searched the house for drugs, but failed to find any. On January 23 they called Ross in to give a further statement. There was no further activity, although at some point – just when is not clear – Khine Zar Win attempted to withdraw her complaint.

On 7 February 2011 Ross flew to Japan to address the Sasakawa Peace Foundation. He talked about the new hope for Burma following the elections of the previous November and the installation of a new civilian government, of the harm done by sanctions, the opportunities for foreign investment, and his plans to hold an investment conference under the aegis of Myanmar Consolidated Media, the parent company of the Myanmar Times.

He returned to Burma on 10 February and was arrested at home the same day. The next seven weeks he spent in Yangon's notorious Insein Jail.

One keeps running across certain adjectives when reading about Ross Dunkley. Perhaps the most common is "controversial", followed closely by "brash", tied with "Australian". The controversy stems from the fact that this is a foreigner running a newspaper in Burma. Myanmar Consolidated Media in fact runs four publications: the weekly Myanmar Times in English and Burmese, and two magazines. The Burmese edition of the Times is the largest-circulation newspaper in the country, and the most professionally produced. It owns some very attractive real estate, has the best printing presses in the country, and employs over 350 staff, with offices in Yangon, Mandalay, and Nyapyidaw, the Burmese Canberra. No other privately-held newspaper has a comparable scope.

Dunkley's success annoys the Burmese opposition in exile no end. Aung Zaw, publisher and editor of the Chiang Mai-based Irrawaddy Magazine, had a famous public confrontation with Ross in Bangkok in 2002, Aung Zaw accusing the Myanmar Times of showing too much deference to the military junta, and Dunkley rather undiplomatically drawing attention to the Irrawaddy's reliance on U.S. government cash. (The Irrawaddy is partially funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, a private, non-profit organization supported by the US Congress).

Relations have not improved since. In an opinion piece in the Irrawaddy on 14 February, days after Dunkley's imprisonment, Aung Zaw wrotethat the Myanmar Times was established as "a public relations exercise by Khin Nyunt [Ross's first patron and once-time Prime Minister and head of Military Intelligence] to polish the image of the military government"; Myanmar Consolidated Media's special privileges, "gave Dunkley's newspaper a leg up on all other independent publications in Rangoon." And, of course, a considerable leg up on the Irrawaddy, which is not available at all inside Burma.

Aung Zaw went on: "Dunkley has never made a concerted attempt to use his priviledged (sic) position among the Burmese journalistic community to advance the cause of press freedom in the country… [I]t is not the imprisoned Australian editor who should be lauded and receive sympathetic international attention at this time. The real heros (sic) that deserve our focus and support are the journalists who, while caring nothing about personal economic profit, take risks every day to fight for a free press and the right of the Burmese people to receive accurate information about their country and government."

Aung Zaw has a point: is the Myanmar Times doomed to be a tool of the junta? Ross is certainly aware of the problem, and appears to regard it as a challenge: "We push the boundaries every week and take our chances when we can get them," he told an interviewer in 2010. And the record suggests that he does. The November 2010 elections may have been bogus – a "transition from direct to slightly more indirect military rule," in the words of Burma expert Bertil Lintner - but they were news, and the Myanmar Times covered them professionally, giving extensive coverage to independent candidates as well as those from the military-backed front party.

At the same time, the Times must deal with the reality of official censorship. When the newspaper was first set up in 2000, the special relationship with the head of Military Intelligence gave it exemption from normal censorship – Military Intelligence, not the Ministry of Information, censored Dunkley's papers. But Khin Nyunt fell from power in 2004, and the Ministry of Information brought the Times into the censorship fold.

The loss of Khin Nyunt did not noticeably inhibit Dunkley. The paper is obliged to publish official propaganda releases, like every other newspaper in the country, yet put it alongside the government's own official mouthpiece, the New Light of Myanmar, and the contrast is immediately obvious. The Myanmar Times carries news people want to read – uncensored daily reports on the FIFA World Cup, reports on how anti-inflation measures have backfired and spurred rising petrol prices, an article on booming property prices based on interviews with real estate agents – all this in place of the verbatim parroting of government press releases which fill the New Light. The Myanmar Times delivers news, the New Light of Myanmar tells you how the generals spent their day.

There's no doubt that Dunkley, a former Walkley Award winner, Australia's equivalent of the Pulitzer, knows his craft, and possibly his single most lasting contribution to Burmese journalism will be the way he has trained up a whole generation of young Burmese in the methods and ethics of modern journalism. "Using funding from the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, the Myanmar Times has trained dozens of Burmese journalists to an international standard … creating journalistic capacity among people that may otherwise have become rickshaw drivers or clerks in office jobs." If, someday, a free (or merely freer) press comes to Burma, the journalists who will be ready to take advantage of it will be there because of Ross Dunkley.

Ross spent almost seven weeks in Insein. (The name means Diamond Lake – there's no lake, and no diamonds). At first he slept on the concrete floor of a cell 10 by 40 meters with about a hundred other inmates; later he was transferred to the hospital wing, where the floor was wooden and the food was better but not much else was different. But at least he was held in a smoke-free environment, for the authorities have a keen regard for the health of their prisoners and smoking is banned in Insein. Eventually he was released on bail.

How did it come to this, after almost eleven years of running probably the most successful newspaper group in Burma? What did Ross do wrong?

At one level the answer to that question is quite simple: he is alleged to have drugged, assaulted and held captive Khine Zar Win, thereby breaching the terms of his visa, since foreigners resident in Burma should not engage in criminal activities.

Nobody actually believes this.

So what really happened?

At the time of Ross's arrest there was much speculation that behind it lay a business dispute with his local partner, Dr Tin Tun Oo. Tin Tun Oo is medical doctor, a self-made publisher, and a very intelligent man. Probably all that separates him from Ross is the fact that one was born in a rich Western country and thereby had more scope for his talents.

Tin Tin Oo is not Ross's choice of partner: he was assigned to him by the Information Minister following the fall of Khin Nyunt. They were never particularly close. "We have a working relationship," Ross told an interviewer in mid-2010. "But I care more about the business and the country than he does. It's ironic that I'm the one trying to open things up and make them happen."

The lack of tact lurking in those comments brings us to the second of the words that always seem to be used by people describing Ross: brash.

In fact I came across this word so often that I looked it up in the dictionary, just to be sure. It means, says the Concise Oxford, "Rash; cheeky; saucy; vulgarly self-assertive." Very Australian, and not what Lee Kwan Yew would have called an Asian value.

And here, in my view, we have the essence of what went wrong: Ross has no feel for Asia. Can a man live in Asia for twenty years and still have no feel for it? Yes indeed. Ross sincerely loves Aisa, but he remains eternally, unselfconsciously, Australian and expat.

So this is a story of what Ross did, without meaning or even knowing, to annoy Tin Tun Oo.

First, Tin Tun Oo was and is the majority shareholder of Myanmar Consolidated Media. He saw that the company was profitable and, not unreasonably, suggested to Ross that a dividend might be in order. He also suggested that he, Tin Tun Oo, should be made Chief Executive of the group. He was backed by the Minister for Information. Ross, backed by his fellow Australian minority shareholder Bill Clough (of the Clough engineering and oil interests - Clough has a $30 million investment in Burmese oil exploration) turned him down. The time was not ripe for a dividend, he said. Ross also said he thought it would be a good idea if the Myanmar Times were to become a daily so it could go head-to-head with the government's New Light of Myanmar. Ross was told that Tin Tun Oo would not be signing his application for a renewal of his business visa.

Then in November 2010 Tin Tun Oo decided to stand in the elections on the USDP ticket, the military's favourite party. Ross filled the Myanmar Times with coverage of the opposition candidates, and Tin Tun Oo lost, one of a handful of USDP candidates to be humiliated like this. Possibly he was not best pleased.

And then Ross heard rumours that he, Ross, was now regarded by certain influential figures as one of them, a Myanmar-person, in recognition of which the Myanmar Times would be allowed to go daily and Tin Tun Oo would be replaced.

And now Ross really blundered. In the last days of January 2011, after the Khine Zar Win affair and before the trip to Japan, he ran an advertisement in both editions of the Myanmar Times. Advertisements don't have to go past the censors. And they don't usually look like this one. In his uncensored double-page spread Ross, speaking for the Myanmar Times, welcomed the new government that would shortly take over and committed his newspapers to the new Burma. "We stand by the principle that we have to be accountable to the law and to our readers." It was, in fact, an editorial disguised as an advertisement.

The glory-box for that edition, the list of senior staff and management that newspapers carry on the editorial page, made no mention of Tin Tun Oo.

A week later Ross flew out to Japan. On his return to Yangon on 10 February the Immigration booth at the airport had a pink slip of paper taped to the wall with his name on it.

Ross's incarceration prompted international media attention and some frenzied activity in Yangon. Bill Clough flew in and met with Tin Tun Oo on February 13, and as a result Tin Tun Oo was made Chief Executive Officer of Myanmar Consolidated Media and Editor-in-Chief of the Burmese edition of the Times (circulation 28,000). Clough became Acting Managing Director of the group and Editor-in-Chief of the English edition (circulation 3,000), filling in for Ross. Clough apologized to Tin Tun Oo and to the Minister for Information. Ross, in his cell, was given his own letter of apology ready for signing.

But the international reaction to Ross's arrest seems to have caught Tin Tun Oo and the Information Minister by surprise. The Australian embassy became involved. According to rumours, the new Prime Minister of Burma was not pleased. The last foreigner to die in a Burmese jail – the last Western foreigner – was Leo Nichols, back in 1996. The generals probably hadn't thought of Nichols as a foreigner – he was Anglo-Burmese, and he was guilty of bankrolling Aung San Suu Kyi – but his death, largely from willful neglect, caused strained relations with the several Scandinavian countries for whom Nichols was Honorary Consul-General. Australia and Burma have managed to preserve quite cordial relations, and the top generals probably didn't want a repeat of the Nichols affair.

Tin Tun Oo now became Ross's most assiduous friend. He attended every court hearing, he insisted to the media that Ross was innocent, and he offered to stand bail. The judge refused: the charge, he said, was non-bailable.

Khine Zar Win, meanwhile, was still trying to withdraw her allegations, without which Ross would not be facing any charges. The police refused to allow her to do so, although to the best of my knowledge they never gave any explanation.

And then suddenly the judge changed his mind and bail was granted. Ross, he said, had a heart condition.

After his release Ross told the Myanmar Times staff that he and Tin Tun Oo had had their differences in the past, and perhaps would have more in the future, but they were looking forward to working together again. Tin Tun Oo has agreed they should work together towards getting a daily license so they can compete head-on against the New Light of Myanmar. Ross has agreed that Tin Tun Oo should get a pay rise.

It has been, Ross says, a humbling experience.